On Learning To Walk

*illustration by Oliver Jeffers

It must be some combination of
the hormones and the salads my husband keeps making for me.

The green smoothies that clear my mind and
leave only self awareness and love discovery.

As a soul-infant I wish to learn everything at once all of the sudden.
I fret about not being able to learn fast enough.
Not knowing enough soon enough.
My shell is cracked open and what weeps out is forming into a new me.
And then I read words like these and today these and I sob tears of recognition.
That maybe I’m not alone on this planet of learning who you are,
of knowing what’s deep inside.

That piece of you that is not you – like a flicker of gold way at the center,
waiting to be sifted through
like those places out west where you can pay a dollar and pan for gold.

You dip your pan into the water, pull up all kinds of silt and dirt and muck and you shake.
You flip.
You turn round and round.
You filter out the dark and dirty.
You find that piece of gold.

Once found you can’t un-find it.
You may lose it…
but you always will know it was found once.

It’s the light in you that was placed there before you were you.
Or when you were you.
Did you know it’s really there?

I cry and fuss as I soul-wait to learn to walk.
I try patience and find it limited.
I learn.